The Last Man on the Moon

Rating:
Summary: This book on tape is poorly read
Review: My chief complaint with this book on tape is that it is read poorly, probably by the author. Although Moon Shot by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton was panned in Amazon reviews, I very much enjoyed the book on tape version because a professional actor did the reading. Cernan's book on tape could have benefited immensely from an actor, too.

I found myself wondering how much co-author Don Davis helped Cernan with the descriptive language and thought it was a waste that Cernan (if he was the reader) couldn't do justice to the words.

As for content, Cernan relies too much on cliches, and I tend to agree with the reviewer who said Cernan writes too much about the internal politics of mission assignment.

However, his account of his first marriage made me wonder how much he wasn't telling. At first he seems to go out of his way to explain that other astronauts cheated on their wives, but he did not. His marriage was sound. Later in the book we hear how he spends too little time with his family. And at the end he tells us they got divorced four years after he left NASA. He, of course, got remarried and had two more children. Sounds like just another guy who traded in his faithful wife of the same age on a younger model. I ended up feeling sorry for Barbara.